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Buddhist Practice and Strength

I want to share with you some of my reflections from this weekend. Maybe you'll permit me not to give a Dharma talk, but maybe a Dharma chat, since they're not so well formulated. The topic is an important one, and one that is seldom talked about. There is maybe even some reluctance to teach it here in the United States, because the topic is easily something that is off-putting for people or can come across as something which is maybe even dangerous. That is the topic of strength—developing inner strength and inner power through this practice of ours. That is part of what we're doing here in this practice.

I think much of the way that Insight Meditation is taught in the modern West—maybe it's implicit—but explicitly there is more language of acceptance. There is more language of just being with your experience, not trying to fix your experience. The idea of personal agency, that you have some control or power in your practice, does not really get emphasized. I think that sometimes it's a shortcoming that we don't do that, and that really developing and becoming strong people is actually one of the benefits of practice. We become a strong person that develops a strong inner core or capacities of various kinds.

It's important because certainly we want to have enough strength to not succumb to our defilements. We want to not succumb to greed, hate, and delusion, and not succumb to unwholesome, unhealthy fear. One of the things that people can be afraid of is themselves. Certainly they can be afraid of things out in the world, but they can be afraid of themselves: afraid of what they're going to say, what they're going to do, what they're going to think, and what they're going to feel. There's a kind of avoidance of really connecting here because of this self-fear that can exist.

This self-fear can easily dampen personal strength. In fact, some people are afraid of their strength. They're afraid that if they are strong, they will harm someone, cause trouble for other people, make other people uncomfortable, or somehow be seen as conceited or assertive in a way that's considered unacceptable in the situation they are in.

Sometimes this fear of one's own strength can be related to an idea that we don't really have a full right to exist or we're not worthy enough to be strong. We feel that somehow we're diminished, less than others, or that we should really keep small, stay unnoticed, stay in the back row, and somehow diminish ourselves. Not diminishing ourselves is sometimes socially disruptive for the scene that we're in. In some families, and even some cultures, there's a preference for being a little bit self-effacing and not assertive. Certainly that can be quite valuable, and at times quite healthy and appropriate, but it can support a tendency for people to be afraid of their own strength. They become reluctant to embody it or engage it, or fail to realize and appreciate that it can be developed and grow.

Some people are looking for something that's going to fix them: some insight, some experience, something that's going to be their savior from the difficulties they have. They are looking outside of themselves for a solution. One of the things about strength in practice is that it develops and grows from the inside out. This has the effect of not solving problems or providing an answer per se. Instead, we grow in such a way that, like the snake that grows, the old skin gets shed. There's something about cultivating and developing a strong inner strength, or sense of power or strengths, that makes us grow so that things just fall off us rather than needing to be solved. Spending too much time trying to solve our inner turmoils and challenges is sometimes a dead end; it's actually more useful to develop a strength.

For example, a strength in mindfulness, a strength in concentration, a strength in ethics and integrity, a strength in patience, and a strength in telling the truth and being truthful to oneself or maybe to others. It is really a strength of presence. Sometimes that can be done physically. In fact, so much of what can be developed in practice develops stronger and more effectively if there's an embodied connection to actually doing this: embodied mindfulness, embodied presence, embodied truth.

Clearly, the Buddha wanted people to be strong, and Buddhist practice develops inner strength. Ideally, we become stronger than our defilements so we don't cause problems in the world or problems for ourselves. Some of the language that the Buddha used in his teachings are words that I associate with strength. Words like ardency, practicing in an ardent way. The word that's often translated as "effort" is a fine word, but it's kind of a neutral word; it doesn't carry any strength in it. The word that's often translated as effort is viriya^[1]. Viriya probably more appropriately should be translated as "courageous effort." The word vīra, which viriya is part of, is a word for hero. I've been told that in modern India it's the word for a soldier, and so "heroic effort" is sometimes the way it's translated, perhaps in Tibetan Buddhism where they use related terms.

The word "power" itself is used. As people develop greater freedom in Buddhism, including freedom from conceit, they are frequently depicted as becoming powerful. The language and symbolism of mature practitioners are often represented by images of power. For example, there's a delightful sutta^[2] where someone who develops an initial degree of freedom together with the seven factors of awakening is described as having a "great self," a "large self." It's a little bit surprising to hear this language of self used in such a definitive way. That great or large self is represented by an analogy of a great mythic being that grows in the great Himalayan mountains: a river spirit or river serpent called a nāga^[3]. Nāga means many things, but one of the things is these river serpents. A person who develops some initial taste of freedom becomes one of these great nāgas who are of a great, large, or expansive self.

Another delightful expression of the power and strength that a practitioner can have is in what's called the "lion's roar." It was something that the Buddha did, and other people in the time of the Buddha did it as well. They would declare their full awakening; when someone came and told the Buddha that they were now fully awakened, that was referred to as their lion's roar. I don't know if you've ever been close to a lion that roared, but I have. Fortunately for me, it was at the zoo (maybe not fortunately for the lion). I was probably only standing four or five feet away from the lion, with bars between us. The roar that it directed in my direction commanded a tremendous amount of respect. I had a primordial feeling that the whole bowels of the earth were roaring at me, and I thought the only respectful and proper thing to do with that roar was to walk away.

So the lion's roar is an expression that conveys great confidence and great strength. The things that are called "powers" in Buddhism are not meant to be powers that we have over other people, but rather inner capacities that we have. The five powers are the five faculties when they're strong: the power of confidence or faith, the power of this courageous effort that has become a real strength that we carry with us, the power of mindfulness, the power of samadhi^[4] (usually translated as concentration), and the power of wisdom. What a great power to have ways to be wise with a real strength that we carry with us!

Another place I associate with powers is what's called the four resolves. The Pali word is adhiṭṭhāna^[5], which could almost more literally be translated in English as "taking a stand." What we have resolved for has a power and a strength behind it. These are interesting lists, and again, it's not power over others. The first resolve is not neglecting wisdom. The second one is preserving and protecting the truth. The third is cultivating the capacity to let go, to relinquish. The fourth is to train in peace—to train to become more peaceful, to develop a strength of being peaceful. Sometimes we don't associate power and peacefulness together; it's almost like peacefulness is an alternative to being powerful, but there is power in the resolve of being peaceful.

Living in a confident, committed, and dignified fashion are some of the associations with developing this power and this capacity to be. It doesn't look from the outside like some developed practitioner is self-effacing, at least not in how they carry and hold themselves, but it is in terms of not having any conceit or arrogance. They are letting go of being self-centered at the same time as being strongly centered. There is no egotistical center, but a strong centeredness in our lived vital experience of being here and present.

One of the ways we might understand this is to live in a manner where there's no need to apologize for ourselves. I think there's a strong tendency in the United States for some people to constantly want to say they're sorry, to diminish themselves for exerting themselves or even being. The way to live a life where we don't have to constantly apologize is what the Buddha called the blameless life. The blamelessness is meant to bring a certain kind of joy, the strength of a blameless life. This is to live a life that adheres to the precepts, to not intentionally be involved in causing hurt or harm through killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and using intoxicants. If you have confidence that you are living this way, you end up living an unapologetic life where you don't apologize for yourself to be blameless. I don't think it's second nature for many people here in this country, but if you can live that way, you're encouraged to feel the joy and power of a blameless, unapologetic life.

In the Dhammapada^[6], there are wonderful descriptions of strong people. They don't use the word "strong," but I think we can substitute it reasonably enough. There's a whole chapter called the Brāhmaṇa^[7]. The brāhmaṇas were the priests of the brahmanical religion. They were a hereditary role, so there were brahmanical families who thought of themselves as being the top class in society. They were the dominant class, often had a lot of authority, owned a lot of land, had a lot of wealth, and were responsible for religious rituals. There was a kind of jockeying for position and a critique of the dominance of the brāhmaṇas. The Buddha did this by redefining what it means to be a brāhmaṇa as someone who has some degree of spiritual awakening.

Here are some examples of these ways from verses in the Dhammapada:

"Who has no clinging, who has nothing, I call a brāhmaṇa."

At first, having no clinging and having nothing doesn't really seem like a situation of power or strength, an important class in society, or someone to revere.

"Whoever is most excellent, a bull, a hero, a great sage, a conqueror, free of craving, cleansed, awakened, I call a brāhmaṇa."

These are all synonyms describing the same kind of person. They talk about excellence, a bull (which is a powerful animal), a hero (which has strength), and a conqueror. This can be quite off-putting for many people in the West to have these kind of masculine-seeming words or concepts associated with it. But there is clearly a strength associated with non-clinging, freedom from craving, and inner cleanliness. It's not an assertiveness or dominance. The idea of being a conqueror is really becoming the conqueror of one's own defilements, one's own inner attachments and clinging. One conquers oneself in a sense, not others.

We get this clear example in other verses, showing that this strength of a practitioner is over themselves, not other people:

"Having given up violence towards beings both timid and strong, whoever neither kills nor causes others to kill, I call a brāhmaṇa."

"Whoever is not adversarial among those who are hostile, peaceful among those who are violent, not clinging among those who cling, I call a brāhmaṇa."

"Whoever lets passion, hostility, conceit, and hypocrisy fall away like a mustard seed from the tip of an awl, I call a brāhmaṇa."

"Who speaks what is true, informative, and not harsh, who gives offense to no one, I call a brāhmaṇa."

All this emphasis on non-harming is presented in a way that implies a real strength of people. This idea of a blameless life that doesn't cause harm in any kind of way—to do that with strength, to be able to stand up in a dignified and confident way, to carry oneself in the world with confidence. To know oneself well enough to know all the forces of self-belittlement, self-fear, and self-criticism where we become less than who we are, and to learn to shed those. To learn to not have them diminish us so that our native strength can be there in a simple, natural, full way. We don't diminish it, we don't apologize for it, and we don't hide from the fact that we're allowed to be strong, present, and fully embodied in a clear, definitive way. We are worthy of that.

In fact, the meaning for an arahant^[8], someone who is fully awakened, literally means a "worthy one." I like to interpret that to mean they're worthy of really being present, alive, and full. One of the goals of Buddhist practice is to become fearless, and part of that is to stop undermining ourselves through fear. The fear that I wanted to emphasize today is self-fear: how we are afraid of ourselves, including our fear of being strong, and therefore diminish ourselves and undermine our strength.

To do this, it helps to take stock of how we're afraid of ourselves. This then allows us to address these fears and develop growing confidence in our capacity to live intentionally without harming anyone, including ourselves. I hope that these ideas are meaningful enough for you to reflect and consider in what appropriate way you can step up and allow yourself to have the native power and strength of someone who metaphorically stands their ground. Someone who speaks freely and confidently what they have to say, talks honestly, doesn't diminish themselves, and is allowed to be present, have a voice, and show up.

That is one of the great benefits of doing mindfulness practice. The mindfulness practice helps us to let go of any force within us that diminishes us and undermines our native natural strength. In doing so, we might end up looking like strong people in the eyes of others, but in our own inner sense we won't necessarily feel that we are now "strong." The inner sense is feeling that we're free. But to be free, from the outside, will look as if we've become strong.

I hope that you will think about this and reflect on it, and that something of what I said today will be useful for you. I would love to meet each of you in your strength. Thank you all very much.